GW2 Final Beta Weekend Rata Sum in PIctures (pt 2)

This time around I'm going to give you a look at Rata Sum, quite possibly the most well designed capital city in the history of MMOs. It's just spectacular! Look!

GW2 Final Beta Weekend Picture Book Mode (pt 1)

Arena Net really outdid themselves IMO. I had high expectations for the Sylvari considering the art team behind all the design on Guild Wars 2, and they seriously delivered. I think the only way to properly describe the Sylvari is to use pictures. I can't find the right words. Every time I go to a new area I'm simply in disbelief of what the people behind GW2 managed to pull off.

I'm already planning my next video. I could spend an entire Month gathering footage of just the Sylvari areas! There's just so much amazing vistas. It's totally insane.

GW2 Looking Really Good

I have to say, after I vanquished some salty pirate dogs and stole all their treasure, my Mesmer is Looking Really Good.

If it was up to me I'd like to go for something a little more regal, but the claw hand gloves are super awesome looking and I like skulls, so it's a tough decision to make.

The mask is from the story mode of Ascalon Catacombs so I'm super happy that ArenaNet didn't wipe our characters because I ended the last Stress Test a level below the required 35 for the mask. This upset me a little considering you only need to be level 30 to complete story mode and the rewards at the end have lvl 35 requirements and now there was the potential chance that I'd never be able to equip the mask. Maybe the level requirement discrepancy is just a minor oversight on ArenaNet's part, but still it did leave me with a bitter taste even though the whole dungeon was so much fun. 

At any rate, this time around I could finally equip the mask and use the gear I'd worked so hard to achieve. Even if it took a month to finally wear my gear, I was happy.

As you read previously, I actually spent nearly all of my time this weekend parked in areas taking screenshots so even though I was logged in for nearly all of the BWE I didn't actually get that much playtime in. That being said, I was pleased with how GW2 has structured itself so that you can play the game for a very small amount of time and still feel satisfied. In the last BWE I spent close to 30hours of total playtime grinding and rushing around getting 100% in every zone I could, and this time around I maybe spent a handful of hours finishing up some things and playing sPvP and WvWvW events. 

I was satisfied. GW2 is coming together brilliantly.

Apart from playing around with some of the new content I also started an effort to catalog the ugly monsters I came across. Initially I was just questing around and filling out some hearts in Gendarran Fields, but once I came across these guys it really hit me. There's some crazy monsters up in Tyria.

This Risen Abomination started the whole idea with his spectacular grotesqueness. I just had to take a screenshot of him. God is he ugly. And unstoppable, or so it says. I hope you're happy First Haven, dealing with the undead threat isn't pleasant. 

The big guy, Veteran Ettin Chieftain, was on a skill point I needed to get near Icegate Gorge so I made him take a dirt nap. My advice for you, if you're ever faced up with the big guy, don't get hit. It's not a good way to start your day.

On a final note, I made sure to stop by the local Quaggan and say "Hi." They quite friendly once you get to know them, just be mindful of the sharks.

What stuck out for you this time around? I just can't get over how amazing GW2 looks. It's straight up gorgeous.

GW2: The Beauty of Tyria

For this Beta Weekend Event I decided to do something a little bit different.

I made a time lapse showcasing Tyria, and how amazing the land is to look at. I realized that I'll have plenty of time to play the game later, and since all this effort to level up and build my characters will eventually be wiped it made since to take a more casual approach to enjoying the BWE. This way I could have something of value to take away from the BWE that's more than just a couple screenshots, or some shiny new shoulders. And you can enjoy it too.

The one thing I didn't think about, but got a good kick out of once I started putting together all of my footage, is how often people would unsuspectingly photobomb my video. In the actual video you hardly notice them, but some of them are quite funny if you take them completely out of context.

LIMBO?

So I finished LIMBO today and it got me to thinking about story, and how some games approach it in unique ways.

See here's LIMBO, a brilliantly artistic game with a definite sense of moody atmosphere, but the story is essentially whatever you want to make of it. Is the kid running from something? Is he trying to get somewhere? Is he trapped in some eternal death machine? Any one of these could be correct, or none of them.

There's nothing in the game that gives you a sense of what's going on, and really maybe it doesn't really matter. As a challenging, and sometimes rewarding, moody platform puzzler LIMBO succeeds. Even without dialogue, or context, it kept me playing. Maybe I just wanted to see the next new and unique way the developers had devised to kill that kid. God knows I had to have killed that kid hundreds of times. Electrocuted, stabbed by giant spiders, torn to bits by saw blades, and jumped to his death, again, again, and again. Maybe that's part of the fun in LIMBO, maybe the whole point of it is to die, get back up, and try again.

Was I satisfied? I thought the game did a great job artistically, and there were some moments where it made a wry smile creep up onto my face. LIMBO definitely pleased me, but it left me wondering.

What exactly did I just play for the last 3 hours?

Bastion: The Value of Details

Notably I'm a little late to the Bastion party. I've been hearing nothing but good things about it, and all my friends have already finished the game. So when it was available through the Humble Indie Bundle 5 I had no choice but to buy it. Given the quality of Bastion I would've gladly paid full price, but getting it for such a deal is equally spectacular.


I think the best way to describe Bastion was something my girlfriend said. I booted up the game, started my first playthrough, and from across the room it was simply:

"What is that? It looks amazing!"

She doesn't even play computer games. At most you could find her deeply involved in a round of Words With Friends, but that would be about the extent of her "gaming." So for a game to gain her interest to that degree is something worth a great deal of praise. The art direction is just that good. Vibrant colors, and crisply drawn environments are painterly. The use of colors perfectly conveys the appropriate feeling for the story at that moment, and all of the areas have their own unique flavors. You want to keep exploring it to find out what's just around the bend. Put together with simple controls and yet an extremely complex combat system makes for a unique taste of action RPG adventure.

The way the game world builds itself up around you as you walk through it is not only a plot device, but an exceptionally amazing way to grab your attention from the first moment you step into Bastion. Combined with the subtle narrator voice dictating your story to you as you perform it makes this more than just an RPG. It grabs you and says, "Hey you. Take notice. Bastion is something you'll want to discover." The story involves you in a way that few games can achieve because of all the little details. The narration makes the story more personal, there's no gigantic walls of text to read and since everything is being told to you during your adventure you gain a connection between the narrator and your actions.

He's telling you what you need to know, and he's telling you about yourself. It's all canned recordings, but the manner in which this information is presented to you makes it feel natural, fluid almost. It feels like your personal story, not some list pre-recorded plot highlights.

Bastion is the game you want to keep playing and it's the little details that make it succeed so well.